picture perfect in a broken frame
by alivingfantasy
Summary: "the love that we're chasing is a heartbreak away."/ or, thirty ways this messy love story could have gone. spoby.


**hi lovelies! now i know i have other things i should be working on, but this idea grabbed me and just wouldn't let go until i wrote it. you know how it is.**

 **i have a thing for AUs, so here we have spoby in thirty different situations, some happy, some sad, some set in the show universe, some set in other universes. title comes from "broken frame" by alex & sierra.**

 **a _fragments of you and me_ update is on its way, i promise, so stay tuned for that, too.**

 **enjoy, and leave me a review, please? thanks :)**

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 _we're picture perfect in a broken frame_

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(or, thirty ways this messy love story could have gone.) spoby.

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 **one.**

He comes to visit his mother, his worn sneakers squeaking over the white linoleum tile, as he holds on to her favorite book, _The Little Prince_ , and a fierce hope.

She's playing the piano in the common room, and he stops to listen to the melody that's just as haunting as the look in her eyes.

 **two.**

She's CoffeeLover1 and he's T0by12 and he's just kicked her ass at online Scrabble.

She seethes about it for a full day because _no one_ beats Spencer at _anything_.

She challenges him to a rematch the next day.

 **three.**

After Alex ditches her at Homecoming, she ducks across the dance floor, swiping a hand over her face irritably, because she's a Hastings and Hastings' don't cry, especially not in public. Especially not after getting dumped.

She bumps into him in her haste, and the minuscule contact sends a current of electricity through her veins.

 **four.**

When the police come to arrest him for setting the firecracker off in the garage where his not-so innocent stepsister was, she steps forward and admits it was her, not him.

The first time she really looks into his eyes is as she's being led away and he's mouthing, _thank you._

 **five.**

She's the straight-laced good girl on her way to the Ivy League of her choice, and he's the unruly bad boy who could care less.

Until, of course, they collide.

 **six.**

He sits behind her in French class struggling with the conditional tense, and she offers to tutor him. Her brown eyes bore into his as she tells him, _C'est la guerre._

He gets an A on the next test.

 **seven.**

In 1942, she's a beautiful seductress with something to hide, and he's a detective with something to find.

What he finds is that he can't get enough of her and the secrets on the tip of her tongue.

 **eight.**

He finds her walking aimlessly in the park at two in the morning, trembling and lost. The blood seeping through her clothing isn't hers.

He helps her bury the body.

 **nine.**

She's an assassin, quick as a blade and just as lethal. He's the first name on her list.

The gun she presses to his temple jams.

She's relieved.

 **ten.**

They get too close to the truth, and Charles makes them pay.

Their last words are broken _I love you_ s.

 **eleven.**

It really is his body in the woods, and she dreams every night of drowning in an ocean the color of his eyes.

She drowns in tears every morning when she wakes up.

 **twelve.**

They stay on the A Team, and wreak havoc in their pristine little town, the fingers of their black leather gloves stained with blood and vodka.

The dark side is awash with light when they're partners in crime.

 **thirteen.**

He's the carpenter Daddy hired to renovate the barn.

He ends up spending most of his time in her room.

 **fourteen.**

In a world without terrorists going by a single initial and death around every corner, he shares his animal crackers with her on the first day of kindergarten, and they walk home together, shoes crunching over dying autumn leaves.

Eleven Septembers later, he finally works up the nerve to kiss her.

 **fifteen.**

In the year 2022, she reluctantly attends her high school reunion after much prodding from her three best friends. As she sits in the corner, watching her former classmates exchange cheek-kisses and handshakes, her only friend a glass of champagne, he sits beside her.

They laugh and talk about everything imaginable for the rest of the night, and she supposes that's what they mean by _making up for lost time_.

 **sixteen.**

She pops pill after pill, chasing each tiny capsule down with swigs of red wine and another slash across the alabaster skin of her wrist.

She's broken in more places than she knows, but he puts her back together every time.

It's somehow enough.

 **seventeen.**

After Wren takes her heart and runs it over with his hundred-thousand dollar Mercedes convertible, she swears she will never allow herself to fall in love again.

In the breath before his lips touch hers, she thinks she changes her mind.

 **eighteen.**

On the eve of her eighteenth birthday, they get into his truck with nothing more than fifty dollars, the clothes on their backs, and each other. Rosewood was never home; they found that in each others' arms.

No one ever hears from them again.

 **nineteen.**

He returns from reform school bitter and world-weary, and on his first day back at Rosewood High, he bumps into a brunette in the crowded hallway, causing her to swear under her breath as her notebooks fall to the floor.

She picks them up hurriedly and scurries away without hearing his soft apology, and leaves him clutching the book that she forgot, _L'attrape Coeurs._

 **twenty.**

She stares at him from her spot at the window, her fathomless eyes locked on his, tumbling dark locks spilling over her tiny shoulders. In the white hospital gown, she looks almost ethereal.

"Which one of us is more messed up, I wonder?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

They never leave Radley.

 **twenty-one.**

At the end of the world, the sun explodes and the ground shakes and the skies cry and there's nothing left.

Nothing but them, clutching each others' sweaty palms as they survey the wreckage.

 **twenty-two.**

She's buying her supersize drip with three sugars at the Brew, and he's sitting at one of the tables sketching his blueprints.

The bell jingles over the door as she leaves, and he realizes he's been sketching her, instead.

 **twenty-three.**

Alison is too late, and Ian kills her in the bell tower, strangles the breath from her lungs until she's just another Rosewood ghost. He wasn't there for her like he promised, and just like that the fairytale has ended before it even began.

She was his best what-might-have-been.

 **twenty-four.**

She misses her flight to London by _three fucking minutes_ and the next one isn't for another twelve hours, so she's forced to camp out at Philadelphia International.

He calls from his desk at the Rosewood Police Department and, "A" and Tanner and everyone and everything else be damned, begs her not to go, not without him.

They never come back.

 **twenty-five.**

He's the painter. She's the muse. He thinks she's beautiful, and that means nothing.

He draws her, every line and sinew. Every perfection and flaw.

He sees her, memorizes her, and loves her anyway, and that means everything.

 **twenty-six.**

She's his vice. His addiction. His bad habit.

She's the first sip of liquor burning its way down his throat, the all-consuming high. She's the electricity, the oblivion.

He wonders how something that he knows is so wrong could feel so goddamned _right_.

 **twenty-seven.**

She walks into the bar in a curve-hugging red dress and six-inch heels, and spots her mark immediately.

He falls for the trap she's intricately laid out, and she can taste victory. Until she really looks at him.

His eyes are dazzling blue, and she feels the heart she didn't know she had skip a beat. He buys her a drink, introduces himself, and asks her name with a smile sweeter than sugar, and the alias she was about to spit out freezes on her tongue.

She's been planning this con her whole life; lies and deceit are her business. But looking at him, she realizes she doesn't want to play the game anymore.

"Spencer. Spencer Hastings."

 **twenty-eight.**

In this universe, he's the sweet, blue-eyed boy with a mother who encourages him to dream big and a father who teaches him to believe in himself.

She's the brilliant, dark-haired girl with successful parents who still make the time to support her at her field hockey games and kiss her goodnight.

Maybe the only tragedy is that they never find each other.

 **twenty-nine.**

They meet at precisely nine oh-one.

He makes a seemingly-innocuous comment at nine oh-five, and she rolls her eyes and corrects him at nine oh-six.

He retorts, and they're bickering by nine oh-seven.

By nine ten, they're engaged in a full-on shouting match.

And at nine twelve, they're kissing sloppily.

 **thirty.**

He's the town outcast with a heart of gold, and she's the picture perfect Hastings with damage in her veins, who mocks him along with everyone else and wears a cool mask of indifference to hide the fact that she feels too much. But this universe likes to throw curveballs, and she finds herself on his porch, and they begin a friendship that surprises her as much as him, and he shows her that it's okay to feel, and she shows him that there is hope to be had.

Their lips touch for the first time in the soft November sunlight, and it's flawed and messy and beautiful and _right_.

They were not expecting that.


End file.
